Reply #167: Whatever. [View All]

[girl gone mad]

You blame Chavez for a problem that long preceded him (lack of investment in infrastructure) and you equate a mild nuisance, brown-outs, to the massive instability and pain we are seeing in Western economies. Were the brown outs in California also caused by leftists, in your eyes?

Corruption? No, the US has no room to talk after a cadre of Goldman Sachs insiders just raped the American taxpayers to the tune of trillions of dollars. Please. We just made Venezuelan cronyism look like kindergarten play.

You want to talk about the Venezuelan economy "crumbling", then your proclamation should contain perspective. We're in the midst of a global crisis and Venezuela is a player in the global economy. The only significant problem Venezuela currently faces is inflation, but it is nothing compared to what S. American economies struggled with in the 90s. On top of that, it's been improving and could be fixed with good monetary policy. The upside of this inflation is that PDVSA is cushioned from the collapse in oil prices and as a result Venezuela sees surpluses and can now invest more in repairing infrastructure, if they choose.

If the Venezuelan economy is "crumbling", then we must be near nuclear meltdown with our policy makers struggling to plug every last leak with piles of printed money before they shove our middle class into the reactor core and flee to their compounds in Paraguay.